A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America

What an incredible story Peter Richardson has told! Ramparts magazine turned the Sixties on its head with a high-octane combination of avant-garde satire and gumshoe investigative reporting. A Bomb in Every Issue is an excellent history that shouldn't be ignored. I can't recommend it enough.--DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, AUTHOR OF THE WILDERNESS WARRIOR

A Bomb in Every Issue tells t

What an incredible story Peter Richardson has told! Ramparts magazine turned the Sixties on its head with a high-octane combination of avant-garde satire and gumshoe investigative reporting. A Bomb in Every Issue is an excellent history that shouldn't be ignored. I can't recommend it enough.--DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, AUTHOR OF THE WILDERNESS WARRIOR

A Bomb in Every Issue tells the largely untold story of the wild ride of this hugely influential magazine that achieved countless firsts: it published the first conspiracy theory about JFK's assassination, it was the first to reveal that the CIA had backed the National Student Association during the Cold War, and its article about the use of napalm on Vietnamese children (another first) caused Martin Luther King Jr. to speak out against the war for the first time.

Launched in 1962 as an intellectual Catholic quarterly, within five years Ramparts had become a secular magazine and won a George Polk Award for "its explosive revival of the great muckraking tradition." Deeply committed to the civil rights and antiwar movements, its contributors included Noam Chomsky, César Chávez, Seymour Hersh, Angela Davis, and Susan Sontag. It was in its pages that Che Guevara's diaries and the prison diaries of Eldridge Cleaver (which became Soul on Ice) first appeared. Although by 1975, out of money and time, it had folded for good, Ramparts left an important journalistic legacy, influencing a generation of reporters and editors that is still apparent today.

Community Reviews

How does an obscure west coast Catholic magazine, fueled by east coast wealth, cigarettes and Christian intellectual fiction become the radical left "slick", design-forward muckraker of the 1960s? How do you go from the nuns of genteel Menlo Park to the napalm of the graphic Vietnam War? From giving out haughty poetry prizes to giving out ink space to The Black Panthers?

This is Ramparts, a magazine you more than likely have never heard about, but that changed journalism as we know it. Many of tHow does an obscure west coast Catholic magazine, fueled by east coast wealth, cigarettes and Christian intellectual fiction become the radical left "slick", design-forward muckraker of the 1960s? How do you go from the nuns of genteel Menlo Park to the napalm of the graphic Vietnam War? From giving out haughty poetry prizes to giving out ink space to The Black Panthers?

This is Ramparts, a magazine you more than likely have never heard about, but that changed journalism as we know it. Many of the writers and editors, and short-lived hangers-on are still writing today and some, are on even the air (an unexpected example would be Brit Hume, who is now on Fox News). This is really a story of a bunch of larger than life figures (and egos) who created out of sheer determination a media that questioned conventions and at times, made really questionable decisions. It's a story of the mid/late 60s and early 70s in America, which was in a crisis of identity and rife with unrest. So much happened in such a short period of time and while there was no social media back then, there were journalists and newly minted "muckrakers" who exposed the CIA, the Establishment and galvanized thousands across the country.

The anecdotes of the players at Ramparts are out of a cartoon at times -- the only copy of a doctoral thesis flowing out of a backpack while on the back of a motorcycle crossing a bridge, reporting on the tumultuous 1968 Democratic Convention from a five-start hotel, a pet office monkey named Henry Luce, and more and more. In between all of this, they managed to print a magazine that angered, motivated, and impacted thoughts and minds on the left and on the right. ...more

A breezily told life-and-times account of Ramparts magazine and its late impresario, the larger than life Warren Hinckle. Ramparts went from an old money funded highbrow magazine in Menlo Park in 1962, to one of the key sensationalist New Left publications, based in San Francisco. The real topic of the book, however, are the fissures of radical politics in late 60s San Francisco: while there was a shared hatred of establishment, technocratic, repressive let tolerant limousine liberalism, there wA breezily told life-and-times account of Ramparts magazine and its late impresario, the larger than life Warren Hinckle. Ramparts went from an old money funded highbrow magazine in Menlo Park in 1962, to one of the key sensationalist New Left publications, based in San Francisco. The real topic of the book, however, are the fissures of radical politics in late 60s San Francisco: while there was a shared hatred of establishment, technocratic, repressive let tolerant limousine liberalism, there were deep disagreements about the counterculture, and skepticism (and worse) about the emergent gender-focused politics that would become central to the 1980s. It's legacy lived on after the magazines demise, through the activities of its alumni, including its cultural proclivities through Jann Wenner, who founded Rolling Stone; its left muckraking through Adam Hochschild, who founded Mother Jones; its foul-mouthed, alcohol-fueled irreverence through Hunter Thompson; and its political iconoclasm through its rightward traveling alumni, including eventual Fox News anchor Brit Hume and generalized whacko bird David Horowitz. A breezy portrait of a particular, febrile, fertile political-cultural moment and place....more

The underground publication, Ramparts, which started off as a Catholic literary journal in Menlo Park, CA in 1962, moved to San Francisco and later Berkeley to become a secular slick with a muckraking mission that impacted journalism and politics in the United States, and spawned several notable successors - Mother Jones and Rolling Stone - before shutting down in 1975.

If you're not that familiar with the San Francisco Bay Area political scene in the 1960s and early 1970s, this book covers all tThe underground publication, Ramparts, which started off as a Catholic literary journal in Menlo Park, CA in 1962, moved to San Francisco and later Berkeley to become a secular slick with a muckraking mission that impacted journalism and politics in the United States, and spawned several notable successors - Mother Jones and Rolling Stone - before shutting down in 1975.

If you're not that familiar with the San Francisco Bay Area political scene in the 1960s and early 1970s, this book covers all the milestone events in passing or with great detail: the Hell's Angels murder at a rock concert, the CIA spying program in the universities, the revolutions in Latin America, the Berkeley protest movements, the Democratic presidential convention in Chicago, and the violent rise of the Black Panthers.

Despite the anarchy and chaos of those times, many of the people involved with the publication, either directly or indirectly, end up having mainstream lives that were radically different from their liberal youths. Except for Henry Luce, the pet monkey who ran amok in the office and slipped into obscurity.

'Peter Richardson’s book vies with Gitlin’s own The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage as one of the most vivid accounts of the antiwar and eventually anti-American New Left. Richardson tells the story in miniature—in little more than 200 pages—through the rise and fall of the radical magazine Ramparts, which blazoned on one cover in 1969, “Alienation is when your county is at war and you want the other side to win.”'

Read the full review, "A Fistful of Dynamite," on our website:http://www.thea'Peter Richardson’s book vies with Gitlin’s own The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage as one of the most vivid accounts of the antiwar and eventually anti-American New Left. Richardson tells the story in miniature—in little more than 200 pages—through the rise and fall of the radical magazine Ramparts, which blazoned on one cover in 1969, “Alienation is when your county is at war and you want the other side to win.”'

Interesting and informative glimpse behind the curtain. As dramatic as anything would have to be concerning these "muckraking" journalists. RAMPARTS MAGAZINE was seminal to my eschewing conventional wisdom in my formative teens and early twenties. A Quixotic endeavor that struggled to survive, then, sadly, died too soon.

A surprisingly well written history of Ramparts Magazine. A small political and cultural muckraker that was briefly prominent in the Sixties before going under. If you're curious about the history of Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers, Weather Man, San Francisco, Hunter S. Thompson or Rolling Stone I'd recommend checking it out. It's all tied together in this book.

A great, quick read about a publication that had an incredible impact on American society that I knew almost nothing about. Full of entertaining stories and anecdotes that almost never get annoying (almost).

I teach humanities and American studies at San Francisco State University and serve as senior literary advisor to the Bay Area Book Festival.

I've written critically acclaimed books about the Grateful Dead, one of the counterculture's most successful and durable institutions; Ramparts magazine, the legendary San Francisco muckraker; and Carey McWilliams, the Los Angeles author and longtime editorI teach humanities and American studies at San Francisco State University and serve as senior literary advisor to the Bay Area Book Festival.

I've written critically acclaimed books about the Grateful Dead, one of the counterculture's most successful and durable institutions; Ramparts magazine, the legendary San Francisco muckraker; and Carey McWilliams, the Los Angeles author and longtime editor of The Nation magazine.

I've also reviewed books for Truthdig, The National Memo, and the Los Angeles Times. In 2013, I received the National Entertainment Journalism Award for Online Criticism.

Bred and buttered in the East Bay, I now live in San Francisco. ...more